Concern for Madison Township wells raised at Brazeway meeting

Thursday

Mar 28, 2013 at 3:00 PM

By Dennis PelhamDaily Telegram Staff Writer

The future of Madison Township’s reserve wells on East Maumee Street was a key point in public comments during Wednesday night’s public meeting on a proposed plan for dealing with groundwater contamination at the Brazeway plant.

A plan Brazeway’s consultants submitted to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality includes creating a restricted zone around the contaminated site where wells would be prohibited. The township’s reserve wells are outside the restricted zone. But township officials said they want assurances there will be no contamination problems in the future if the reserve wells are needed for Madison’s growing water system.

It will be up to the township government, Brazeway and the DEQ to work out testing with the reserve wells in operation, said Mitch Adelman, supervisor of the DEQ’s remediation division at the Jackson office.

Madison Township Supervisor Larry Richardson said he felt satisfied with the responses to township officials’ questions.

“Brazeway has been a good neighbor,” Richardson said. He expects cooperation will continue as consultants Madison Township hired on Monday evaluate the groundwater contamination and look for assurances the township wells are protected.

The wells on East Maumee Street are currently not in use. DEQ officials said if the wells are activated, groundwater could be monitored to track any movement of contamination toward the wells.

Evidence now is that the wells are not threatened, said Sheryl Doxtader, a DEQ environmental quality analyst. The wells are outside the zone where groundwater contamination is known to exist, she said, and the township wells are much deeper than the contaminated shallow water around the Brazeway plant. An 80-foot thick layer of clay lies between the contaminated water and the aquifer tapped by the township wells, Doxtader said.

The public meeting Wednesday is part of a process leading eventually to closing out the Brazeway site.

Contamination was first detected in 1993, leading to municipal water being installed in the neighboring Drexel Park Subdivision.

Brazeway has taken a number of steps since then to reduce contamination. The proposed plan calls for managing and monitoring the groundwater as the contaminants gradually break down and degrade. Doxtader said the plume of contaminated groundwater has been reduced in size in recent years and no longer extends under all of Drexel Park.

The remediation action plan now up for public comment relies on Lenawee County’s environmental health code being amended to allow a restricted groundwater use zone to be established to ban wells in contaminated areas.

The plan also calls for connecting homes along East Beecher Street south of Brazeway’s property to a municipal water system. Wells at the homes are being monitored and have not shown any contamination to date, said Adelman.

Semiannual groundwater monitoring is to continue in the area, Doxtader said, and any changes in conditions would trigger additional responses.

Written comments on the remediation action plan are being accepted through 5 p.m. on April 15 at the DEQ’s Jackson district office, 301 E. Louis Glick Highway, Jackson, MI, 49201-1556, or by email to Doxtader at doxtaders@michigan.gov.